Wikipedia editors have voted to ban right-wing website Breitbart as a source of fact on any of its articles.

The consensus, reached last month after a lengthy discussion, was that the site "should not be used, ever, as a reference for facts, due to its unreliability."

According to user JzG, the editor who put the rule forward, Wikipedia has "over 2,500 links to Breitbart, many of them as sources in articles. I think that Breitbart is not a reliable source. Sometimes it's being used as a source for what Breitbart says, in which case it is not independent.

"It's my view that we should not source anything to Breitbart other than strictly factual and uncontroversial facts about Breitbart on the articles related to Breitbart and its people."

For English articles, Breitbart has been "deprecated" in the same way that British newspaper The Daily Mail was last year, according to The Guardian. "This does not mean Breitbart can no longer be used, but it should not be used, ever, as a reference for facts, due to its unreliability. It can still be used as a source when attributing opinion/viewpoint/commentary," said a Wikipedia editor and administrator called Fish+Karate.

Soon after the decision was made, Wikipedia editors began making a list of all the instances Breitbart had been used as a citation for an opinion, which will be preserved. Other instances of Breitbart being used as a citation will be deleted.

With misinformation and election meddling being top of mind for tech giants, major platforms have taken to partnering with news outlets on fact-checking efforts. YouTube, for example, adds Wikipedia links to conspiracy theory videos in an attempt to combat deliberate inaccuracies.

And while Wikipedia is not always correct, it does have a strong focus when it comes to weeding out fake news. In an interview, Victor Gringas, who writes and edits Wikipedia articles but also works as a video producer for the Wikimedia Foundation, said that the site is a "crash course in library science and intellectual property law."

However, these rules do not apply globally. In China, a government-approved version of the website exists based on the existing Chinese Encyclopedia. As such, all content is likely to be pre-approved to favour the government and as such cannot be seen as reliable.

About the Author

Adam Smith is the Contributing Editor for PCMag UK, and has written about technology for a number of publications including What Hi-Fi?, Stuff, WhatCulture, and MacFormat, reviewing smartphones, speakers, projectors, and all manner of weird tech. Always online, occasionally cromulent, you can follow him on Twitter @adamndsmith.

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